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Burn

For owners of bots in Morcraven Marsh - coming change

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We don't have a date for the client release yet, probably not until sometime in the first half of 2021. Depends on bluap's client work and anything else I'm doing on maps. This is just a "head's up" that there's going to be a change.

When we're ready to release the next official client update (1.9.6, not bluap's pX releases), there'll be a change to MM.

 

The bot situation in MM is currently a mess with so many in one odd place. There will be a change which will require you to move (slightly) your bots into a new "marketplace" next to the battle hall, in the same place that most of the bots currently reside.

[images removed, they were there for information purposes, not a f**king critique and whining about other maps]

 

 

 

 

There are 20 stalls, chosen on a first-come-first-serve basis. There are not 20 bots in MM so space isn't an issue.

 

 

ALL BOTS that are placed to be convenient to storage or the battle hall will need to move into the stalls once the update happens.

 

Exceptions: Bots that are not placed to be near storage/battle hall, but are near resources (outside of cave entrances being the common ones). Those can move to the new marketplace if desired but it's not required. The purpose is only to clean up the bot situation around storage and the battle hall, not disallow resource locations. I don't think we have any indoor bots there anymore but those are excepted as well.

 

 

 

Edited by Burn

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Can you trade the bots while having the camera angle very high? Because most of the other 'stalls' in EL you cannot trade or interact with things that are in stalls when your camera angle is very high and it's quite annoying.

 

Bot owners of MM, I'll be less likely to use your bot if it's in one of these stalls if I can't trade it without making a goofy camera angle.

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10 minutes ago, Diealot said:

Can you trade the bots while having the camera angle very high? Because most of the other 'stalls' in EL you cannot trade or interact with things that are in stalls when your camera angle is very high and it's quite annoying.

 

Bot owners of MM, I'll be less likely to use your bot if it's in one of these stalls if I can't trade it without making a goofy camera angle.


You can see my bot in the image. You can see me in the image.

If you have problems at pretty much any angle then there's something wrong with your client, or you, not the stall.

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9 minutes ago, Burn said:


You can see my bot in the image. You can see me in the image.

If you have problems at pretty much any angle then there's something wrong with your client, or you, not the stall.

 

Wow, very helpful!

I don't have the test version like you do, and your photo is taken from a fairly low camera angle. Please tell me how I can simulate a very high camera angle from your picture? I can't see if the 'roof' of the stall blocks the bots head or not because... well... the image doesn't show that. That's why I was asking you.

 

I guess I'll wait and find out whenever it's released and complain about it then so we can wait another 3-4 years for it to possibly maybe get changed into something less bothersome instead of fixing the little problems now (or even discussing potential little problems).

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I think he's talking about the roofs that are often over bot stalls that you have to zoom in and majorly adjust your angle to "look up"  in order to see who they are (the idle bots in Portland come to mind).  So I have a question: can other stalls be adjusted to remove those roofs?

 

(Side note: Disclaimer: I do like the marketplace stall concept and wish more were used.  But - I'm not a fan of those walls. They don't look natural for the area. They remind me of those folding temporary privacy screens. Are the walls necessary? Also they add to the likelihood people will get trapped like happens at the Portland magic fruit.)

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1) Define roof as is seen in the image. There are NO roofs in the image, so what the flying... cheesus christ.


2) Several years of asking people to report map bugs and now I'm being told there's "magic fruit" something in PL that does what exactly? Show me the bug report. There's no possible way to get trapped in anything I designed here.

 

[image of layout with height tiling removed]

 

There is no height tiling indication of any place a person could get "stuck".

3) The idle bots were placed in HORSE STALLS, not vendor stalls. The bot owners are responsible for that, not the map. They should not have been permitted to be placed there.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Burn

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Long time lurker, rare times commenter…

 

A few things…

 

First, personally, I am not fond of the stalls. I have no issue with them aesthetically, i just find they make getting into acceptable trading range of a bot slightly more fiddly, and I often find EL a bit finicky when trying to get my char to stand on precisely the tile i want.

 

As for the stalls Aislinn mentioned, the type that i find the worst for requiring camera angle adjustment are the type with a canvas(?) roof, like the EVTR General Store. That was the type i pictured in my head when she mentioned the bots in PL, I had to go there and check after Burn called them horse stables. Whatever the structure, a roof over a stall is a pain. As for bot owners placing them under a non market stall… I had the impression that bot owners didn’t have completely free choice when picking place so maybe they had to compromise, or who knows what other factor affected that choice.

 

With regard to trading with high camera angle that Diealot mentioned, maybe he didn’t look closely enough at the image to notice there would be no problem with high angle on those particular stalls, or maybe he was concerned that they could be changed to stalls with a canvas (or otherwise) roof. It was stated that decor could still change.

 

Maybe what he was thinking of was that structure behind Burn (and his bot) in that pic might obstruct clicking on a bot placed in the next position along (counterclockwise from bot then Burn), although that obstruction would be made worse by a low camera angle not a high one *shrug*

 

As to possibility of blocking chars, I can’t speak to those particular kind of stalls, but I have experienced players being pinned in stalls when a char stands either side of the bot. Saw it a number of times in the old Zirakgunda cave before it’s current form, and that place wasn’t exactly busy compared to around MM battle hall at instance time. The wooden structure in that pic look like they are 1x3 tiles in size (the bench in front on the bot, with something larger behind them) so I presume the same could happen.

 

On the matter of the low wall around the whole area, visually I have no issue, but practically speaking it’s a bottleneck that increases chance of chars trying to walk the same path and causing the couple of seconds watching my char stand still while trying to decide which path is not obstructed when the obstacles (other players) are moving through the same area. 

 

And just to agree with Diealot on something, i too would, given the choice, walk a few extra steps to trade with a bot out in the open than one behind a stall! :)

 

Edited by Jofu
clarification

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No roofs \o/

 

As long as they do not turn into these type of devil's creations:

W64LsHV.png

 

I'd still like to see a very high camera angle version of the thing (closer to top down as above) but it's fine.

Edited by Diealot

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I have always been playing with very high camera angle AND always North up.

First that came me in mind were Mira too, you need to scroll in first time you trade.

Second thing, if NPCs or bots stand close to a house, check Palon Vertas storage,  do it look like they stand in the wall - hard to see name.

I think maybe your bot will too on 2nd picture.

Third thing: I dont know what is north/south but if the gray wall is south will I not be able to see the row next to them. 

Walls should always be lower than the bots. 

Why not replace the 3 brown blocks with bots around 3 tables ?

Why the low brown wall ? It make it easier to block the place

 

I have not reported things like NPCs standing in the wall ,  should they ? Dont know how many use high camera angle.

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The purpose of this post was solely to pre-announce that bots would have to be adjusted so owners would have a head's up.

It was not for a critique and an extensive amount of whining and moaning about stuff on *other maps*.

 

The images are now removed, absolutely nothing will be shown in advance again at any time to anyone publicly.  That was MY mistake, and I've now paid for it by getting back a stress ulcer I just got rid of. It'll be weeks before I can even look at the maps again.

 


I don't need this. I'm done.

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12 hours ago, Burn said:

There are 20 stalls, chosen on a first-come-first-serve basis. There are not 20 bots in MM so space isn't an issue.

 

Does that mean that we'll have to choose the stalls now or we'll have to sort it out once the map get updated

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My apologies for upsetting you.  There was no intent to be difficult or insulting, just some thoughts (which everyone has) based upon your comment regarding "decor" possibly still being worked on (since deleted with the images). 

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IMHO, I've always thought that trade bots should be in market stalls. It looks better and gives the bots more of a trade appearance. How difficult would it be to raise bot names up slightly so that their names are visible or simply pick the stalls without a roof.

 

The above statement is my own personal opinion and has no bearing what will actually happen when all things are said in DONE. If you don't like it, don't come off on me :P

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Why I'm done:

"ZOMG ROOFS"
"There's no roofs."
"I can't see from the top because of roofs!"
"There's no roofs. You can see no roofs in the pictures. You can even see the top of the bot's head in the second picture."
"But roofs block my view because I'm playing a 3D game solely from one angle!"
"There's no gods-damned roofs!"
"Okay, I just don't want them to be like this completely irrelevant map that shows something that looks nothing like what you showed in the pictures."

 

*ulcer intensifies because a facepalm just isn't enough and I didn't f*****g ask for any of this, I had a subject and only one subject*

 

"I'm playing as if the game is 2D from one view only and I don't want anything that makes the game 3D!"

 

*ulcer intensifies even more because this is not some level of ridiculous that any map editor would cater to*

 

"What I think he means is roofs."
"There's no damn roofs."
"But here in Portland there's roofs."
"I'm not posting about Portland I have a very specific subject and location here."
"Hey but what about roofs?"
"Hey but what about the subject I actually posted this for?"

"But trapping! Hey, here's a fruit in Portland you've never been told about that does something you still don't know about."
"Here's the actual height tiling for the new MM location. Show me trapping."
*no showing*

 

*ulcer intensifies*

 

"I also play like it's a 2D game and expect nothing 3D"
"No. This is a 3D game, and just as I explained repeatedly there's no f******g roofs so it's moot anyway!"
"Here's more irrelevant stuff you didn't create the subject about."
"...You people have done your best to ensure I can't care about any of it, and regret ever showing anything beforehand. I'll never do that again. I should have known better."

 

*yup, my ulcer is back for good*

 

*wakes up from what little sleep I could get because of it to read this in my e-mail*

"clearly I did not realize that maps are the sole department of EL that is exempt from discussion and critique."

 

1- At last check, the sole part of EL exempt from discussion or critique is moderator actions by actual rule, because you can't handle that. Not this.
2- A moderator should understand the concept of TOPIC. I did not post this to end up having to deal with this bull***t, people made an intentional choice to turn this into a nitpick-every-damn-detail attack on my work and go ranting about other maps when all I wanted to do was notify bot owners of a coming change. My only fault was not expecting this after 12+ years of it being the norm rather than the exception. I should never have posted images. I won't make that mistake again.
3- In any normal scenario, you would never see any map changes, by me or by Acelon or by any other before me, until the map was in the game because they only needed go through Acelon, or possibly roja before that. So no, you don't normally get a say on that. But you actually know it's possible to get something changed, without compounding on s**t like this, because you have a perfect example of that kind of change in a flower shop in PV that no longer looks like it used to.

 

The reality is this:
1- Dare I say, there's no damn roofs? There is absolutely nothing here that will be any damn horror to players, people are just desperately looking for things to complain about.
2- The walls are necessary to keep mapwalking from sto to battle hall from ending up in the middle of the market and all those bots. Any "bottleneck" cannot be completely avoided anywhere in the game, but I guarantee this is better than no wall.
3- There's no damn roofs.
4- This topic is not about any other map. In every scenario in every other map, the bot owners selected their location, you can bitch at them. It's nothing I'm going to do anything about, nor can I in situations like Portland. I can't change the 3D objects themselves that you're complaining about there, nor am I going to completely redesign the city just because poor bot placement choices were made. (And I really don't even want to for anyone that can't move their camera in a 3D game.)
5- There's no damn roofs.
6- The only possible way of anyone getting trapped would require at least two other players/alts intentionally setting themselves up to block someone. That's intentional behavior that harassment and blocking rules are already in place for them to be dealt with. And it's hardly the only location that can occur.  
7- There's no damn roofs.

 

I'm not just some random person who never plays. I actually do play, and I know how the mechanics work, whether it's trading or mapwalking or the requirements that would lead to getting blocked or teleport nexus behavior. Even more so since outside of just playing I've actually studied all these things as they relate to all the map fixes I've been doing for years now.

 

I don't add or change anything that I wouldn't want to deal with while playing myself. I test these things in more ways than you can possibly imagine, in fact that was why my own bot on Test was there, to test to make sure there were no issues. Hell, I even have scripts that I wrote that grab the map data and test distancing and dozens of other issues.

 

So yes, I'm done being accused of not being smart enough to actually think of these things. The area went through multiple changes, worked on and tested off and on over a period of months already that led to my results with the walls being not only necessary, but having openings at very specific places that prevented mapwalking inside them going to/from storage from other places, and the distancing between where bots would be. The height tiling (where people can walk) was studied and determined any blocking would have to be intentional and an issue for moderators, not something that would just regularly happen.

 

I'm the one who FIXED a chunk of places where I knew or was told there were such issues, not added to them. (Remember people getting teleported onto a bush while harving VotD toads? Getting teleported and stuck on the platform the bookseller in Naralik is on because there were no stairs up to it?) I didn't spend years making changes to literally every official map in the game without knowing these things.


I made a specific post for a specific topic. The topic got completely lost over the barrage of unfounded off-topic complaints and insults to my intelligence. And for that, and for the stress ulcer I was given, I'm completely done. I have nothing else to say on this matter.

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8 hours ago, dragon_killer said:

 

Does that mean that we'll have to choose the stalls now or we'll have to sort it out once the map get updated

 

First-come first serve for the stalls when the update occurs. Will probably be messy there the first few days until the owners get on or last resort mods tptm bots with inactive owners.

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Well if they are el-services.net bots i can after bots got moved make those new places tradeplaces. as long as i know which bots need to be modified. And on that topic, i do like the work you did do burn,  and if i may make a suggestion, it would be something nice if around other bot locations (that often got chosen because it will not do harm to players walking) there would be trade tables, or blankets and so o n depending on what is needed, even if it is not a setup marketplace

 

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